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The Food Programme: Food Memoir

Food Memoir

06/12/2009

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Food Memoir

Simon Parkes explores the popularity of the food memoir.

A whole new crop of food writing has appeared on the bookshop shelves in recent years. The food memoir gives a life story through food. Simon Parkes explores its popularity.

Food Memoir has been a growing trend in food writing in recent years. The combination of food writers' recollections and relevant recipes has proved a hit with countless readers. Simon Parkes explores this trend and asks why it's so popular. He talks to Josceline Dimbleby, who is in the middle of writing her own food memoir, Italian food writer Anna del Conte talks about Risotto with Nettles and Yasmin Alibhai Brown discusses The Settler's Cookbook, both published in 2009.

In the studio, Kathryn Hughes, biographer of The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton, and journalist, novelist and critic John Lanchester discuss the genre and dissect some of the new and not-so-new publications.  

What attracts established food writers to this literary style? How difficult is it to get right? Do the recipes get in the way of a good story, or is it the other way round? What works and what doesn't?

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